Diablo 3 no official release date and not confirmed for consoles

Over the past couple of days, reports from across the net claim that a
release date for Blizzard’s latest instalment of its hack ‘n slash
Diablo series has been set, and that Diablo III is coming to Xbox 360
and PlayStation 3. Blizzard says that both reports are untrue.

Though the World of Warcraft and Starcraft developer hasn’t released an
official statement confirming the news, Blizzard community manager
Micah “Bashiok” Whipple Tweeted this week back to a fan who posed the
question “Can you confirm or deny
Diablo 3 coming to consoles?” “Yup,”
Whipple said. “Josh Mosqueira is lead
designer for the Diablo console project.”

It looks like Whipple may get his knuckles rapped by Blizzard, however,
who swiftly contacted Wired.com, who initially broke the story, to tell
them that Whipple’s response was misinterpreted.

“Bashiok’s response on Twitter was
intended as a confirmation that we’re actively exploring the
possibility of developing a console version of Diablo III, as we’ve
mentioned in the past,” the representative wrote in an email. “This is not a confirmation that Diablo III
is coming to any console platform.”

Reports this week also suggested that Diablo III will be released on
February 1, 2012 after BestBuy listed the game for purchase on that day
and set up a digital countdown timer outside one of its stores ticking
down to that date. Blizzard immediately Tweeted: “Diablo III does not have a release date.
Any store or person claiming otherwise is guessing.”

BestBuy ticker
hints at midnight Feb 1, 2012 launch

If Diablo III is due for release on February 1st, we'd have expected
Blizzard to have announced it officially by now, but BestBuy is
obviously confident in its prediction if it’s gone to the trouble of
creating advertising outside of its stores. As for the console port of
Diablo III? Well, Whipple does appear to have let the cat out of the
bag, but until we hear from the official source we’re not entirely convinced.

Blizzard has stated in the past that if it did ever decide to bring
Diablo to consoles it would build the game from the ground-up.